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Monday, November 16, 2015

Labor's Battle in South Korea

Above are three short videos from the recent protests in Seoul, South Korea against the President Park Geun-hye (daughter of former brutal South Korean dictator) government that is cracking down on labor unions, small farmers, social justice and peace movements. The right-wing government wants to break the unions which are fighting attempts by the corporate dominated government to get rid of permanent jobs and vastly increase the number of 'irregular' (part-time) workers. Currently 33% of all Korean workers are irregular. See more on this here

In recent days the government has raided union offices in attempts to arrest labor leaders in advance of the massive protests held during this past weekend. Workers tried to block the police from entering union buildings.

Global corporate capitalism is now on a binge to destroy labor rights and bring on further austerity (neo-feudalism) measures. The fight back by progressive movements in South Korea is more advanced than in many other countries. In South Korea the unions are working in harmony with farmers, peace and social justice movements understanding that only a united front against corrupt corporate run governments can hope to have any impact on these coming anti-democratic policies.

The fact that the U.S. essentially controls the South Korean government should be a signal to everyone that these kind of policies, if successful, will be increasingly brought to western nations. Already austerity policies are being instituted around the world but the next steps are to completely destroy full time work, pensions, health care, public education and more.

What is needed now is a unified global campaign of resistance against all these corporate plans to destroy social progress. The old ways of each movement working in relative isolation will not have any impact on these corporate plans.